Apparatus for making artificial leather or the like



Aug. 4, 1936. J. B. CATLlN T AL APPARATUS FOR MAKING ARTIFIQI'AL LEATHER OR THE LIKE Fil ed Oct. 20, 1952 5 Sheets-Sheet 1 I" -Wzzzi 5+, EzzanZfA/Yarauek. N fizWWM J. B. CATLIN ET AL 2,049,892

APPARATUS FOR MAKING ARTIFICIAL LEATHER OR THE LIKE Filed Oct. 20,- 1952 5 Sheets-Sheet. 2

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APPARATUS FOR MAKING ARTIFICIAL LEATHER OR THE LIKE Filed Oct. 20, 1952 5 Sheets-Sheet 3 13mg; 4, 1936. J. CATLIN ET AL I I 2,049,892

'APPARATUS i 03 MAKING ARTIFICIAL LEATHER on THE LIKE Filed Oct. '20, 1952' Sweets-sheet 4 1936- I J. B. CATLlN ET AL APPARATUS FOR MAKING ARTIFICIAL LEATHER OR THE LIKE Filed 00?.- 20, 1952 Sheets-Sheet 5 Wwww Patented Aug. 4, 1936 PATENT OFFICE APPARATUS FOR MAKING ARTIFICIAL LEATHER OR THE LIKE John B. Catlin, Appleton, and Rudolf A. Moravek,

Neenah, Wis., assignors to Paper Patents Company, Neenah, Wis., a corporation of Wisconsin Application October 20, 1932, Serial No. 638,716

4 Qlaims.

This invention relates to an improved apparatus for making artificial leather or like material, and the main objects of the invention are to provide a practical and economical apparatus for the continuous production of a uniform artificial leather or like product; to provide means for impregnating a web of absorbent paper or other material with latex or other binding material and to compress such impregnated web to a definite thicknessj to provide means for controlling the proportion of binding material in the product; to

provide means for insuring thorough impregnationof the-web with the desired proportion of binding material; to provide an arrangement for handling and compressing the wet web without material danger of breaking the web while subjecting the same to compression; and in general, it is the object of the invention to provide an improved apparatus for making a product of the kind referred to.

Other objects and advantages of the invention will be understood by reference to the following specification and accompanying drawings (5 sheets) in which is illustrated an improved apparatus for accomplishing the above stated objects in producing an artificial leather or like product.

In the drawings:-

Fig. 1 is a side elevation.

Fig. 2 is a section on the line 22 of Fig. 1.

Fig. 3 is a side elevation on an enlarged scale of a lower portion of the mechanism shown in Fig. l, certain parts being shown in section to more clearly illustrate the details of the construction.

Fig. 4 is a fragmentary sectional view of the upper portion of the mechanism shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 5 is a section on the line 55 of Fig. 4.

Fig. 6 is a fragmentary plan view of a portion of the mechanism at the top of Fig. 1.-

Fig. 7 is a detail sectional view illustrating a cleaning device.

Fig. 8 is a diagrammatic representation of a modified form of mechanism.

Referring now to the drawings, and more particularly to Fig. 1, a plurality of sheets of creped paper are indicated at l0, six such sheets being indicated in this instance, although the number of sheets may be varied to suit particular requirements of the product to be made. It will therefore be understood that the six sheets illustrated represent any number of sheets,'one or more, which are to be treated according to the process of the machine about to be described. The sheets are fed into the bite of a pair of cooperatively arranged guide rollers II -ll, from which the single sheet or multi-ply sheet designated I2 passes downwardly into the mechanism about to be described. The sheets It] may be either single or multi-ply sheets and they are drawn from any suitable source of'supply not herein illustrated. This machine embodies a plurality of pairs of cooperatively arranged compression rolls |3--l3, there being illustrated in this instance six pairs of such rolls arranged in vertically spaced and aligned relationship. One of the rolls l3, in this instance the right hand one in Fig. 1 of each pair of rolls is rotatably mounted in a fixed bearing carried by frame members such as I4. The other roll l3 of each pair is rotatably mounted in a bearing l5 which is slidably adjustably mounted on a bracket such as l6 carried by a cross memberqsuch as l4.

For adjusting the and from its cooperating, stationary roll l3, the bearing l5 at each end of the roll is connected by means of a shaft I! to a device I8 which includes a rotatablymounted worm wheel having an axial aperture threaded to receive the threadedend l9 (Fig. 2) of the shaft [1. Cooperating with the said 'worm wheel, there is a worm gear rotatably mounted and carried by a shaft 20 which is provided at one end with a handwheel 2| whereby the shaft and worm gears may be rotated to effect rotation of the worm wheels to thereby longitudinally adjust the shaft l1 and the adjustable roll l3. Inasmuch as worm and worm wheel devices such as I 8 are well-known, it is considered unnecessary to illustrate the same in detail.

The supporting brackets I4 |4 are supported by standards 2222, and other frame work indicated at 23 is suitably connected with the said standards so as to form supporting means for additional elements which will presently be referred to.

A pair of belts 24-24 of foraminated material; for example, woven wire of about 90 mesh, are respectively associated with one roller of each pair so that adjacent active reaches of the belts 24 are pressed towards each other between the successive pairs of rolls l3 and inactive. portions of each belt' are guided through cleaning boxes 25-25, around adjustable belt tensioning rollers 26, around stationary guide rollers 2'! and over adjustable guide rollers 28.

The tension of the belts 24, as above indicated is controlled by the tension adjusting rollers 26,

these rollers beingcarried by brackets 29 which are mounted for adjustment along screw threaded shafts such as 30 which are rotatable through the adjustable roll 13 towards agency of hand wheels such as 3 |,'the latter being suitably geared to the said screw threaded shafts. A guide member 32 acts on the lower end of the bearing bracket so as to prevent rotation of the bracket about the shaft 30. An auxiliary tensioning effect is obtained by adjusting the guide rollers 28, these rollers being carried by bearing blocks 33 which are adjustable along screw threaded shafts such as 34 which are rotatable through the agency of hand wheels 35.

The chief function of the belts 24 is to effect the thorough impregnation and permeation of the web bythe binding liquid, which it does by its kneading action on the web.

Above the stack of compressing or calendering rolls I3, there is formed a supporting frame work 36 on which are mounted a pair of head boxes 31 (Fig. 6) into which a suitable binding fluid or compound; for example, latex or a latex compound, is fed from weir or meter boxes 38 into which such material is fed through the agency of pipe lines 39 connected to a suitable source of supply. Valves as indicated at 40 are provided in the pipe line for shutting off the supply of material when desired.

The head boxes 31 are illustrated in greater detail in Figs. 4, 5, and 6, to which attention is directed. Each head box consists of a generally rectangular receptacle having its front wall provided with a pair of longitudinally adjustable gates 4l-4l which are slidably mounted in the front wall in any suitable manner; for example, bymeans of tongues and grooves as illustrated in Fig. 4. By adjusting the gates outwardly, an opening 42 is provided centrally of the length of the head box and the binding material indicated at 43 in Fig. 4 may then flow by gravity through the opening 42, down an apron 44 and into the nip or trough formed by the adjacent upper surface portions of the uppermost pair of rolls I3. The gate members 4I4| are adjustable through the agency of a shaft 45 having right and left hand screw threading at its opposite ends respectively for engaging corresponding internally threaded brackets 46 which are secured to the respective gates 4|. The shaft 45 is rotatably supported by suitable brackets such as 41 and a hand wheel 48 is provided at one end of the shaft for facilitating rotation of the shaft.

The operation of the mechanism in producing a product such as artificial leather may now be described as follows: The webs of material ID are brought together between rolls ll so as to form, in effect, a single or multi-ply web I2 which,

moving downwardly enters the bite between the foraminous belts 24 carried by the respective vertically aligned rolls l3 of each pair of rolls. Before entering the bite of the said foraminous belts 24, the web l2 passes through the bath of binding material in the trough formed between the up permost pair of rollers l3, and hence becomes thoroughly soaked or impregnated with the binding material. Of course, a quantity of the material piles up in the center of the trough, but its depth gradually lessens towards the ends of the trough, and hence end guides for retaining the material in the trough are not required. Piling up of the binding material and omission of end guides is made possible because of the con.- sistency of the binding material, because of the central delivery of the binding material, and because of the effective control afforded by the gates 4 [-41 of the flow of binding material to the trough, which permits the said flow of material to be regulated to supply the material at approximately the same rate as it is absorbed by the web.

In its passage between the belts 24 and between the successive pairs of rollers 13, the web I2 is subjected to successively increased compression 5 so that the binding materialxis effectively worked through the web and excess binding material is squeezed therefrom. It will be understood that a gradually increased compression of the web is effected by correspondinglyadjusting the pairs of 10 rolls I3. The web of material issues from beneath the lowermost pairs of rolls l3 and is deposited on a conveyor 49 which carries the web to a suitable drying kiln, not illustrated. The product thus formed is a tough, flexible sheet of material 15 having a certain amount of resiliency and elasticity. It has been found suitable for use in many ways as a substitute for leather, and hence, for convenience may be designated artificial leather.

The fine mesh wire belt between which the prod- 20 said rolls, doctor blades 50 such as illustrated 30 best ,in Fig. 4 are provided. As shown in Fig. 4, the doctor blades 50 are mounted on pivoted brackets 5| which are provided with outwardly extending arms 52 having weights 53 on their free ends whereby the doctor blades 50 are yieldingly maintained in engagement with the surfaces of the respective rolls l3. The blades 50 are effective to scrape from the roll surfaces the binder adhering thereto. The material thus scraped from the roll surfaces is caught in a pan or the like 54 which is carried by the bracket 5| and the said pan is provided with a drain outlet 55 through which the binding fluid may empty into a trough 56 which leads into a drain pipe 51. Each of the rolls l3, except the lowermost pair of rolls, is provided with a doctor blade arrangement such as just. described so that they are all maintained clean.

Because of space limitations in the mechanism, a special arrangement of doctor blades is provided forthe lowermost pair of rolls, this arrangement being clearly shown in Fig. 3. By reference to Fig. 3, it will be seen that doctor blades such as 58 are associated with the upper surface portions of the rolls, such blades being carried by pivotally mounted brackets 59. Weighted arms 60 connected to the said brackets 58 serve to yieldingly maintain the doctor blades 58 in operative engagement with the surfaces of the rolls so as to scrape the adhering binding material therefrom. The amount of material thus scraped from the lowermost rolls I3 is very small, if not negligible, these doctor blades being provided more as a precautionary measure rather than as a mat ter of necessity. The material removed by the doctor blades 58 runs to one side and is permitted to drip into a drip pan 8| which is suitably posiboxes 25 through slots such as 52, pass over rollers such as 63 under rollers such as 64, thence upwardly and over tensionadjusting I'OHBI'S'IG. Intermediate the guide rollers 63 and 64 in the cleaning'boxes, the belts are subjected to sprays or showers of cleaning fluid or liquid delivered by a series of shower pipes such as 6.5. Water may conveniently be used for this purpose. Intermediate the shower pipes 65, there are provided rotating beaters or cleaning brushes 66 which are constructed substantially as shown in Fig. '7.

Each brush includes a shaft 6! which carries a pair of disks 68 in spaced relation. A series of bars 69 of wood or other material are secured in circumferentially spaced relation to the spaced disks 68, and these bars carry beaters formed of a strip 10 of felt or the like which is folded upon itself and has interposed between its folds a rubber strip H. The beater element thus formed is secured to the bar 69 by suitable clamping means such as indicated at 12.

Each of the rolls I3 is positively driven at the same surface speed so that the belts fill-.24 are also driven by reason of their frictional contact with said rollers. The means'for driving the rolls l3 includes a speed reducing driving mechanism 713 (Fig. 3) which may beof any conventional construction, the power source for the speed reducer being here indicated as a pulley M which is driven by a belt 15 which in turn is driven from any suitable source of power. The speed reducer delivers its driving power through a gear 16 which meshes with a gear 71 secured to one end of the shaft of the stationary roll of the lowermost pair of rolls l3. At its other end, the shaft of said lowermost roll is provided with a gear 18 which meshes with a pinion l9 fixedly mounted for rotation on the bracket M. The corresponding end of the shaft of the cooperating roll I3 is provided with a gear which meshes with a pinion 8|, the latter also meshing with the pinion gear 19.

In order to permit one of the rollers l3 to be adjusted towards and from the other roller l3, without impairing the driving connection between the rolls, the gear 8| is rotatably mounted on a stud 82 that forms a pivotalconnection between arms 83 and 8d, the free ends of which arms are respectively pivoted on the shaft of the roller l3 and the pivot shaft of the gear 19. It will be seen that when the rolls l3 are adjusted toward or away from each other, the links or arms 83 and 84 will effectively maintain the floating pinion gear 8| in mesh with both gears 19 and 80.

Each pair of rolls I3 is provided with a gear connection such as 18, 19, 80, and 8|, and for transmitting driving power from one pair of rolls to the next-higher pair of rolls, gears such as 85 each driven by a,sprocket and chain connection from the shaft of the underlying roll l3 are rotatably. mounted on the standard 22 for transmitting rotation from the gear Tl of one pair of rolls to the ear 17 of the next higher pair of rolls.

For effecting rotation of the beater brushes 66 of the belt cleaning boxes, the shaft of the next to the lowermost stationary roll I 3 is provided with a pair of sprockets as indicated in Fig. 2 for receiving chains 86 and 81 which respectively engage sprockets carried by extended ends of the. shafts of one beater brush in each box. The various-beater brushes in each box are interconnected for rotation by means of gear trains. such as indicated at. A

In Fig. 8, a modified arrangement of the structure is illustrated and in this arrangement, the foraminous belts 24 are guided between an uppermost pair of rollers 89 and between two pairs of lower rollers 9|] and 9| respectively. Intermediate the pairs of rollers 89 and 90, there are three rollers 92, 93, and 94 around which the wire belts 24 are threaded so as to follow a zigzag path of travel substantially as illustrated. -By maintaining the belts taut, the desired compressive effect on the webbetween the belts may be obtained by this arrangement aswell as by the previously describedarrangement which involves an increased number of roll pairs.

We claim as our invention:-

1. Apparatus for making artificial leather .and the like, comprising, in combination a frame, a vertically disposed group of pairs'of press rolls journaled on said frame, independent means associated with each pair for varying the pressure between them, a pair of head boxes for a binding liquid mounted above the topmost pair of rolls, adjustable gates in the inner opposed walls of said head boxes controlling the size of the flow openings from said boxes, aprons for conducting the liquid from said openings to the nip of the topmost rolls, a pair of guide rollers above said head boxes into the nip of which a plurality of plies of creped paper are received and compacted and by which the resultant web is directed into the nip of said topmost pair of press rolls, and

means for driving said pairs of press rolls in themeans associated with each pair of rolls for bodily adjusting one roll toward and from its companion roll whereby to vary the pressure between them, a pair of head boxes for a binding liquid mounted above the, topmost pair of rolls, adjust? able gates in the inner opposed walls of said head boxes controlling the size of the flow openings from said boxes, aprons for conducting the liquid from said openings to the nip of the topmost rolls, a pair of guide rollersabove said head boxes into the nip of which a plurality of plies of creped paper are received and compacted and by which the resultant web is directed between said belts at the nip of the topmost pair of press rolls, means for driving said pairs of press rolls in the same direction at equal speeds whereby to advance saidbelts and web between them, and a discharge conveyor underlying the lowermost of said pairs of press rolls. 1

3. Apparatus for making artificialleather and A the like, comprising, in combination a frame, a vertically disposed group of pairs of press rolls journaled in said frame, a pair of oppositely disposed woven wire endless belts extending between and in contact with the rolls of the several pairs, guiding and tensioning means for the inactive portions of said belts, means for cleaning said belts operating on said inactive portions, means associated with each pair of rolls for bodily adjusting one roll toward and from its companion roll whereby to vary the pressure between them, a pair of oppositely disposed head boxes for a binding liquid mounted above the topmost pair of rolls, adjustable gates in the inner walls of said head boxes controlling the width of the flow openings from said boxes, aprons for conducting the liquid from said openings to the nip of the topmost rolls, a pair of guide rollers located centrally above said head boxes into the nip of which acplurality of plies of creped paper are received and compacted and by which the resultant web is directed between said belts at the nip of the topmost pair of press rolls, means for driving said pairs of press rolls in the same direction at equal speeds whereby to advance said belts and web between them, and a discharge conveyor underlying the lowermost of said pairs of press rolls.

4. In a machine of the class described, the combination of a. pair of compressing rolls, means for mounting said rolls for adjustment towards and from each other, means for driving said rolls at uniform speed including pairs of. gears respectively secured to said rolls, a pair of pinion gears respectively meshing with said pair of gears and with each other, one of said pinion gears being mounted in axially fixed relation to the roll gear with which it meshes, and means for mounting the other of said pinion gears for peripheral ad- J'ustment relative to the roll gear with which it meshes and to the fixed pinion gear, thereby to maintain said gears in predetermined operative relationship throughout all adjusted positions of 10 the compression rolls.

JOHN B. CATLDT. R'U'DQILrF A. MORAVEK. 

